Welcome to The Milwaukee Renaissance

“The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.
Father Teilhardde Chardin

Build and grow with the earth, one neighborhood, one rural community, at a time. In quest of some kind of renaissance. Introducing an On-Line Magazine and Movement Resource, for Milwaukee first, but then for the Great Lakes cities, towns, and rural communities, and always, God willing, open to the wider world, all of God’s children.

I don’t think Father Chardin would have used the word “build” were he alive today. But it does make sense to imagine the many movements of our time would become more perfect, with a “richer and better organised material edifice.”

Father Chardin has also been stretching our minds beyond the here and now, all the way to the dawn of life and the end of time as we know it. His “Phenomenon of Man” has inspired a section devoted to evolutionary psychology as a source of insights valuable for our collective “evolutionary gropings” toward some kind of Milwaukee and Great Lakes “renaissance.”

Don’t know if you caught the obit in the NY Times about the passing of Murray Bookchin. Strangely enough the obit in the Times treats old Murray pretty well.

Murray Bookchin

The point they only briefly touch upon, is that if “community” means anything in terms of importance in the process of community planning, city planning, architecture and social justice building, we all owe an enormous debt to Bookchin and his work and that of all
his pen names.

Bookchin was the first person to really look at the entire planet as a community. He wrote “Our Synthetic Environment” a year before Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. Basically, her macro scale arguments plagerized Bookchin’s ideas.

Even before his book, “Our Synthetic Environment,” in fact, 10 years before the book, Bookchin published an article called “The Problems of Chemicals in Food”, which is really what Carson’s “Silent Spring” is about.

Again, we owe him, and probably Hans Jonas, for being the 2 philosophers that made “Green Politics” possible(Jonas though an American citizen by then, was really the intellectual behind the European Greens- and Bookchin here in the US)

Bookchin was an acquaintence. I can vividly remember him during a TV show in New York City on building community, trying to figure out how to save NYC saying, “Community, Community, what we need is more community”. Bookchin probably understood that term best.

Edelman’s remarks inspired me to buy Bookchin’s “The Ecology of Freedom: The emergence and dissolution of hierarchy, “ when I discovered it for sale at the new Infoshop opened up on Fratney and Clark by the Cream City Collective. And Bookchin has inspired me to read Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” “a peasant Illiad of the seventh century before Christ…For the first time in a written legacy, work—in contrast to valor—appears as an attribute of personal nobility and responsibility.” I am also inspired to look up the story of Cokaygne? Bookchin suggests may be a better vision of paradise than the rather abstract visions I was raised with back in the late 1940s and l950s.

Imagining the emergence of some kind of “Great Lakes Culture” brings to mind one of the finest spirits of the movements of the past generation, Detroit elder activist Grace Lee Boggs. http://www.boggscenter.org/

If , on the other hand, we acknowledged and honored our children’s souls, our schools would engage them in community-building activities with the same audacity with which the civil rights movement engaged them in desegregation activities 40 years ago: planting community gardens, recycling waste, organizing neighborhood arts and health festivals, rehabbing houses, painting public murals. By giving our children and young people a better reason to learn than just the individualistic one of getting a job or making more money, by encouraging them to exercise their Soul Power, we would get their cognitive juices flowing. Learning would come from practice which has always been the best way to learn.

Instead of trying to bully young people to remain in classrooms organized to prepare them to become cogs in the existing economic structures, we need to recognize that the reason why so many young people drop out from inner city schools is because they are voting with their feet against a system which sorts, tracks, tests, and rejects or certifies them like products of a factory. They are crying out for another kind of education that values them as human beings and gives them opportunities to exercise their Soul Power.

My bet today is that a series of “guild houses” in the old buildings by the railroad tracks, just to the east of the Amaranth Bakery and Cafe, on 32nd and Lisbon, might afford “a richer and better organised structure [that] will correspond to a more developed consciousness.”

Build the earth,grow with the earth, combinatorial earth play, from where we are. Here is a galaxy in the noosphere to present some of our earth works, with a focus on Milwaukee and the Great Lakes, but a hope to be of value to the wider world.

Ábrase a energías más altas aumentando su separación de resultados

Reclaiming the Milwaukee River

When I bought a sweet English cottage on the 3300 block of Gordon Pl. in Riverwest back in 1977, many of my friends were shocked at my spending $60,000 for a house “in the ghetto” on a bluff overlooking a river that was stagnant, odiferous, and unpleasing to the eye, in a river forest not safe to walk through. These past 30 years have found the neighborhood, Riverwest, and the river, the Milwaukee River, in rebirth, little by little, year by year. There are now many very bright and committed people in grand alliances between Milwaukee’s and Wisconsin’s civil society and the government successfully reclaiming the neighborhood, the river, and the river forest: all now a source of great beauty and pride for those who have witnessed this metamorphosis. I hope to accelerate the renewal of the river at this site: Milwaukee River

These two pictures were taken during my first walk across the Milwaukee River, in honor of recently returned to the Beloved Frank Zeidler, from the west bank 3300 North to the east bank directly across the way.

The water was cool and freely flowing, the aromas were sweet, and I could see the rocky bottom(no mud!) from the most shallow area about l/2 ft. deep, to the deepest area, about 2 ft. deep.

Riverwest Co-op a hub of one of the urban villages of our Great Lakes cities making history around dismantling racism, sustainable development, and preservation movements.

Riverwest Co-op

The food is good for you and tastes great. The workers, volunteers, and customers are most pleasing to encounter.

There are thousands of Milwaukeeans of all identity groups intent on transcending the cancer of racism in their daily lives. There are scores of poets and artists focusing on creating culture products that contribute to this cause. Here is a poem by Riverwest poet Harvey Taylor that offers one elemental act to advance:

Two Human Beings

Two human beings walk towards each other
from opposite ends of the block,
two human beings pass trees and street-signs,
as vehicles whiz by,
two human beings, probably strangers,
move on a concrete sidewalk,
two human beings, one, black, the other, white,
one, female, the other, male,
two human beings, one, old, the other, young,
approach each other,
two human beings avoid eye contact,
until the last moment,
two human beings are about to pass each other,
when one says, “Good morning,”
and the other,
surprised,
says
“Yes”

There is a major and complex development project on the west bank of the Milwaukee River, just to the north of North Avenue. I wonder if a wiki site would be useful to the various parties to this significant public choice.

The Amaranth Bakery and Cafe has mounted a great red flag to let the people know there’s heavenly aromas and food fit for the gods awaiting those lucky enough to make their way inside this great gift to our fair city.

Culture Workers at the Amaranth

The bakery and soup at the Amaranth is divine.

Chef Stephanie Shipley

May Day has come and gone.

Songs and social practice complejidad armonizada hermosa.

From May Day to Thanksgiving Milwaukee is a feast!

Around Mary’s, St. Joseph’s, and the International Working Classes’ May 1st Holy Holiday the apple blossom trees bloom brilliant shades of white, rose, and lavender, in the language of one apprentice folk artist.

When Comfortable Old Shoes Trumped New “Mall” Shoes as Status Accessories in Milwaukee

Wanda Scruggs, Master Cobbler,Scruggs & Sons

Is it possible to imagine a movement that inspires the people to feel more blessed and bright wearing shoes they take for repair over and over and over again. Can comfortable old shoes ever equal brand new shoes for their inspirational value and comfort for the wearer? Can the repair of shoes become an art form in the eyes of the people and the “New Cobblers.”

There is a good chance that “retiring” or “second/third career boomers” will play an important role in the renewal of Historic Milwaukee. Many boomers who took great risks and paid dearly for their participation in the movements of the 1960s put their commonwealth commitments aside, or spent less time on them, while raising children and establishing careers. Now that these 60s activists are becoming empty nesters and approaching retirement from their major career, we are finding many of them ready to spend their remaining 10 through 30+ years in service to the major movements of the day.

Bringing Home a Growing Power Garden

Garden 07/13/06

One former 60′s activist making new waves is Bob Graf. He was inspired by Will Allen and Growing Power to develop a home version with a Growing Power Box in his sun room during the winter, and using Growing Power affordable and sustainable ways of growing in his backyard garden. Bob keeps a daily diary of his home Growing Power model that is based on “Worm Power”. The diary also has a mix of Bob’s advocacy for human rights and for peace.

You can check out his “Graf Family mini web-site” which not only contains his “Diary of a Worm in a Home Growing Power Box and Garden,” but also his monthly newsletter “Living Stones”, his diary of Guatemala, “Buried in Guatemala” and some art work by his son Peter.

Perhaps the Milwaukee Renaissance will occur by virtue of partnerships of “Milwaukee Green Teams” with Heifer International. Will Allen has close ties with this impressive organization, whose opening statement goes as follows:

Our mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for theearth.

Heifer’s most inspiring mission statement and links to Heifer projects across the planet may be found at…

Milwaukee’s embryonic renaissance has been in concert with other Great Lakes cities, from Toronto, to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, all the way northwest to Deluth, where Bob Dylan grew up I’m told.

Here is some photovoltaic art glass by a Toronto artist, Sarah Hall, whose husband is a fine Son of Milwaukee. Sarah’s work combines art with sustainable development and is winning world-wide attention.

The story of the Milwaukee Renaissance
is also the story of the Great Lakes Renaissance, and the liberating energies given to these movements by good people from virtually every major “tribe” and “nation” of Mother Earth.

Here are some photos from the Grand Opening of Antalee, a “Wellness Spa and Gallery,”
created by a Milwaukee Chicago family that began in Russia.

AntaleeWellnessSpaAndGallery

Increasingly renowned Riverwest Milwaukee has been making great strides toward creating a “Rainbow Urban Village.” We hope to offer many RiverwestStories?.

Fine New Americans and Planetary Citizens of the Riverwest Co-op

And Milwaukee’s West Side, most noteworthy Walnut Way, Sherman Park, Historic Concordia, and Washington Heights, with others we hope will demand their rightful place, is in renewal.

Here are some welcome patrons of the newly opened Amaranth Bakery and Cafe.

Blia Cha, Dave Boucher, and Hilaria Rios

ACTS CDC’s Social Enterprisers. Dave Boucher and Stephanie Shipley are the creators of the Amaranth Bakery and Cafe. I am searching for a picture of Stephanie, somewhere in my files, or, God willing, someone will send me a nice picture of Stephanie.

Erica Flynn and Bill Sell

A rich dark red flag signals the bread is hot at the Amaranth Bakery and Cafe!

And the fine sons and daughters of our old city neighborhoods and inclusive public schools will be making their mark as well.

The Re-Spiriting of Old Milwaukee will witness growing numbers of the new generations buying our precious housing stock inherited from the ancestors and renewing them with love, beauty, and efficient function.

The Re-Spiriting of Historic Milwaukee, will find people doing their best to avoid the monotony of freeways and slowly discovering the growing beauty and life drama of our neighborhood main street and old city thoroughfares.

I was so astonished to find Oliver riding his bike to our meeting with a lender at my bank that I asked if I could take his picture and introduce him to some of my on-line friends who might wish to consider some help from an accountant who rides his bike to business meetings, and all that such an act implies.

Gail Fitch is one of Milwaukee’s top historic preservation writer and activist. Her articles in Historic Milwaukee’s “Echo” document the city’s rich architectural heritage and support her determined, creative, and successful organizing efforts to save many of our endangered treasures.

Gail played a major role in the “Save the Pabst Buildings,” including the establishment of a web site to support the cause. Her “Echo” articles offer a quick source of background information for anyone wishing to join the good preservation cause.

Meghan McCabe is a FEEDs Coordinator at UW Extension Milwaukee County, who has been also introducing critically important articles on the challenges and opportunities of organic farming and community food systems to Milwaukee readers.

She is the main author of the plans for an Eco Village at the transforming Pabst Brewery Complex.
MarchUpdate

Bill Sell is becoming a very important young elder in Bay View and many movements, most profoundly the “Free the Hoan Bridge” project.

Bill has blazed trails in creating and then hosting the Bay_View_Matters yahoo group, which I think might have as many as 500 households involved since its founding in the summer of 2003. Here are some of Bill’s and others’ most notable reflections on a variety of things, personal and political, local and international. Bay_View_Matters Yahoo Group

‘La materia será puesta al servicio de la mente’

Renee Crawford is becoming one of the top “movement professionals” of her generation.

I have known Renee since she was a playmate of my daughter Rachel and one of the children of the Eastside babysitting co-op of the 1970s, and life-long participant in the progressives causes of our fair city. Her resume and blog are winning the attention of people looking for a new generation of leadership for the good fight.

In the 1970s Sally, Pat Jankowitz, and Peggy McElrath inspired the downtown Kiwanis club, where Sally’s father had volunteered, and musicians from across the country(even Yoko Ono!), to support the city’s first Stay in School program. In the 1980s Sally worked with Joel Pfeiffer’s mural project with the USSR, called “Clay Stomp.” In Sally’s words, this was “a fun, playful, community minded peace mural exchange…a magical project where 100 wonderful volunteers helped orchestrate the event at Summerfest grounds, 5,000 came to stomp the clay and then make a fabulous mural which resides in St. Petersburg. Our planning took 2 years to develop, many in kind donations kept us alfoat. A wonderful community of friends, artists, networkers, etc. were involved and we still have close knit connections. Then we went to Lennigrad at the time, 20 of us, to create the mural that resides at our airport.” At Growing Power Sally has recruited hundreds of people to take Growing Power Tours and give their labor to create a community based food movement in the USA and beyond.

Milwaukee Families With Long History of Fighting the Good Fight

This place is reserved for families who have spent the past two or three decades doing the right thing. My first nomination must be the Hays Kelly Family, which served as my reality principle while I lived on Gordon Place. After all, it takes a village to make a person.

‘’‘Katharine Kelly’s Hockey PhotoAmherst College 2006

Civil Rights Attorneys and Zen

I witnessed Larraine run for alderman, and win(!), on the Eastside of Milwaukee sometime back in, methinks, the 1990s.

Riverwest Civil Rights AttorneyLarraine Mc Namara Mc Graw

Larraine is now a civil rights attorney who I hope will use this site as a platform for some of her ideas about dismantling racism, among other worthy causes she has advanced throughout her adult life.
I hope to present Larraine’s thoughts about what it took to become alderman on the eastside, what were her major accomplishments and challenges, and what projects she hopes to focus her considerable energies and resources on over the next 5 or 10 years. Her discovery of Zen will also be given attention.

Una para terminar y para satisfacer al uno mismo más profundo

Walnut Way Resurgent

Welford Sanders, Jerry and Sharon Adams, and others have pioneered the transformation of
WalnutWay, a neighborhood that started to slip in the 1960s and 70s, but has been in renaissance since the formation of the Walnut Way Neighborhood Conservation Corporation in 1998.

Sharon Adams of Walnut Way andJerry Kaufman of Growing Power

Neighbors partnered with the city and with Growing Power around themes of economic enterprise, environmental stewardship, and civic engagement. The city gave Walnut Way five lots. Growing Power helped turn those lots into city farms and gardens which now sell tulips and produce in farmers markets. Hmongs, Mexican, and African American neighbors are creating community through sharing food and growing food.

Riverwest Resurgent

Milwaukee is home to one of the most
Authentically integrating urban villages
Of the Great Lakes, i.e. Riverwest!
On the west bank of the cleansing Milwaukee River,
A neighborhood the city planners, using
Ahistoric, apolitical number crunching models
Called “deteriorating,” in essence a slum in the making,
Back around 1977.

The Mimes Helped SaveLocust Street in 1975

But the planners did not realize the power of the people
Of Riverwest, and their new young allies. An alliance was forged
And Locust Street, a key main street with community supporting enterprises,
Was saved from the bulldozers and boulevardization for the cars.

The Friends Mime Theatre teamed up with the ESHAC activists
And put forth a guerrilla theater performance in front of
The Gordon Park Co-op, back around 1975,
Drawing a polyglot crowd to board the busses for City Hall,
To Save Locust Street!?

NAACP, NABVETS, Bridgeworks, and “Rebirth of Freedom” at the Soldiers Home

Cleo Pruitt sparked a project to honor veterans of color at the glorious Soldiers Home Grounds in the summer of 2005. The NAACP and the National Association of Black Veterans(NABVETS)were the leading supporters, with much help coming from the Veterans Administration.

Our young people are organizing themselves
For the cause of non-violence, at home and abroad.

Summer of Peace Organizers

Summer of Peace Elders

Milwaukee is renewing the Menomonee Valley!

Milwaukee is awakening to the environmental movements of the day. Milwaukee’s City Hall has taken positive steps around the issue of the “Greening of Milwaukee” We hope to contribute to a “grand alliance” to support the vision of the Mayor’s Green Team, hoping to spark greening partnerships among identity, preservation, environmental groups and our educational institutions.

Milwaukee is becoming a cosmopolitan city,
with people exchanging
goods and services
and building community
from probably every nation
on the planet.

Milwaukee is blessed
with a civil society
of rich history and an eye toward
renewal and evolution.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Lose this day loitering, ‘twill be the same story Tomorrow, and the rest more dilatory; Thus, indecision brings its own delays And days are lost lamenting over days, Are you in earnest? Seize this very moment; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Courage has genius, power and magic in it; Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin it and the work will be completed.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

We have recently been introduced to a visionary urban bill of rights from brothers and sisters in California.

Others are developing African Projects and Caribbean Projects. The world is becoming one and Milwaukee’s embryonic 21st century renaissance will make its proper contribution to the pacification of the struggle for existence, for harmony and mutual aid among all of God’s children.

Scott Finch’s story about his father’s WW II experiences have inspired an effort to inspire Our Parents’ Stories for our own enjoyment and illumination, as well as for the generations to come.

We have had an impact advancing the cause of the following “movements”:

Urban Farming and Community Gardens with Will Allen’s Growing Power

The internet empowerment of citizens for personal and public profit

The renaissance of old city neighborhoods, including Riverwest, Harambee, Walnut Way, Bay View, and more

The establishment of a monument to the memory of African American veterans and the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King at the Soldiers Home, in cooperation with Cleo Pruitt, Jerry Ann Hamilton, and Gen. Bob Cocroft.

Promotions support for avant guard small businesses and enterprises like Timbuktu, Lula’s East African Cafe, Bucketworks, the Amaranth Bakery, the Acanthus Bed and Breakfast, Scruggs and Sons, and many more.

Introducing spiritual traditions that foster non-violence and the elevation of the spirit in us all, e.g. Rumi readings at Timbuktu, Father Teilhard’s integration of Darwin and mystic Christianity, the B’hai perspective

The “MilwaukeeRenaissance.com” offers a platform for a growing number of writers addressing controversial and taboo topics, especially those pertaining to the color line, gender, ecology, mental health, and “official violence.”